SUPER-MAN: SUPERnumerary Robotic Bodies for Physical Assistance in HuMAN-Robot Conjoined Actions

Journal: Elsevier Mechatronics | Paper Link: This work presents a mobile supernumerary robotic approach to physical assistance in human–robot conjoined actions. The SUPER-MAN concept is to develop and utilize mobile collaborative systems that can follow human loco-manipulation commands to perform industrial tasks through three main components: (i) an admittance-type interface, (ii) a human–robot interaction controller and (iii) a supernumerary robotic body. The first system is called MOCA-MAN, and is composed of a redundant torque-controlled robotic arm and an omni-directional mobile platform. The second one is called Kairos-MAN, formed by a high-payload 6-DoF velocity-controlled robotic arm and an omni-directional mobile platform. The systems share the same admittance interface, through which user wrenches are translated to loco-manipulation commands, generated by whole-body controllers of each system. This work was supported in part by the European Research Council’s (ERC) starting grant Ergo-Lean (GA 850932) and in part by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program CONCERT (GA 101016007).